Roy Sydney Porter

Roy Sydney Porter
Born: 31 December, 1946 - London, UK
Died: 3 March, 2002 - St Leonards-on-Sea, UK


historian - wrote or edited over 100 books
academic



I wish to explore what mad people meant to say, what was on their minds. Their testimonies are eloquent of their hopes and fears, the injustices they suffered, above all of what it was like to be mad or to be thought to be mad … My points of reference, therefore, are language, history and culture.
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In the culture of madness ‘reality’ and ‘representations’ endlessly played off each other. What a crazy world in which the poor had to pretend to be mad in order to get a crust!
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Every age gets the lunatics it deserves.
- A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane (1987)


The emergence of this high-tech scientific medicine may be a prime example of what William Blake denounced as 'single vision', the kind of myopia which (literally and metaphorically) comes from looking doggedly down a microscope. Single vision has its limitations in explaining the human condition; this is why Coleridge called doctors 'shallow animals', who 'imagine that in the whole system of things there is nothing but Gut and Body'.
- The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1997)

Isaac Asimov

Source of image

Isaac Asimov
Born: January 2nd, 1920 - Petrovichi, Russia
Died: April 6th, 1992 - New York City, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
non-fiction writer


Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.
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There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.
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Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.
- Pebble in the Sky


The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.
- The Caves of Steel


You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.
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It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
- Foundation's Edge


Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.
- The Secret of the Universe


You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.
- I, Robot

Thomas Keneally...

Thomas Keneally 
Born: October 7th, 1935 - Sydney, Australia


Booker Prize
Miles Franklin Award - twice
Order of Australia - 1983


novelist
playwright
non-fiction writer


Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.
- Searching for Schindler: A Memoir


The afternoon is hot in this alien forest. The sunlight burrows like a worm in both eye-balls. His jacket looks pallid, the arms are rotted out of his yellowing shirt, and, under the gaiters, worn for the occasion, the canvas shoes are too light for this knobbly land. Yet, as already seen, he takes long strides, he moves with vigour. He’s on his way to Mr Commissary Blythe’s place, where his secret bride, Ann Rush, runs the kitchen and the house.
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The Whales came back in white froth, and went again; back and went again. Whenever they went, they whacked the water with what looked like wrath in such big creatures. Yet perhaps it was horror. Whichever way, men disappeared amongst curds of angry water . . . the creatures did not come back the third time.
- Bring Larks and Heroes


The dogs were really keening now, like Irish widows.
- Victim of the Aurora


In the mind of a true snob there are certain limited criteria to denote the value of human existence. Jimmie's criteria were: home, hearth, wife, land. Those who possessed these had beatitude unchallengable. Other men had accidental, random life. Nothing better.
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The truest crime remaining to him to commit was the waste of love. It should be bequeathed, as land is.
- The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith


Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire. 
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The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.
- Schindler's List

Gore Vidal...

Gore Vidal
Born: October 3rd, 1925 - New York, U.S.
Died: July 31st, 2012 - California, U.S.


novelist
playwright
essayist
non-fiction writer
screen-writer


Interesting fact: Vidal had bitter feuds with other authors, notably Truman Capote.
See HERE



We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.
- The City and the Pillar


Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.
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That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.
- Myra Breckinridge


How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself. 
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My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.
- Julian


I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.
- Death Before Bedtime

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death.
- Creation

Truman Capote...

Truman Capote
Born: September 30th, 1924 - Louisianna, U.S.
Died: August 25th, 1984 - California, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
playwright
non-fiction writer


It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
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Never love a wild thing...If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
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Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.
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Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.
- Breakfast at Tiffany's


It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.
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Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.
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Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.
- In Cold Blood


There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.
- The Muses Are Heard


Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.
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Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
- Summer Crossing


It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.
- A Christmas Memory 

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.
- Music for Chameleons

Josef Škvorecký...

Josef Škvorecký
Born: September 27th, 1924 - Nachod, Czech Republic
Died: Janurary 3rd, 2012 - Toronto, Canada


novelist
poet
essayist
non-fiction writer


Regarded as a Czech-Canadian writer
I am a Czech and I am a loyal citizen of Canada, he told an interviewer in 2006.
(Ref  NYT HERE)


We may think we live for wisdom, but in fact we're living for the the pleasure wisdom brings us.
- The Engineer of Human Souls

After sixty years of the Soviet state’s struggle against art, it should be obvious that Marxists in power do not trouble themselves about aesthetics.
- Hipness at Noon


There’s this tradition in Czech literature that books are sacred, and therefore the language used in writing books is very formal—without contractions, distortions, or slang...
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Hemingway. I suddenly saw that you could write dialogue as people spoke it. But I didn’t read Hemingway until the end of the war in an English-language Swedish edition of A Farewell to Arms. And then I read everything. It opened my eyes. I realized that you could write dialogue that need not be informational; it simply was.
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If you live in a country where politics are oppressive and you write—or try to write—you can’t avoid being a political writer. I enjoy writing about other things, but to write a novel about Bohemia in the past forty years and avoid politics entirely would be to write some sort of romantic idyll that never existed. I consider myself a realistic writer; it’s unfortunate that one becomes a political writer out of necessity.
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Every writer writes, first of all, for himself. I think my primary readership consists of intelligent exiles because I write about Czechs not only in Czechoslovakia, but also in North America as in my new novel, about the role of Czechs during the Civil War. But I believe that if something has relevance for people of my own nation, then it probably has relevance for everybody, and that there’s something universal about it. The accidentals may be different, but the basics are the same, and they’re universal.
- Paris Review Interview - 1989 - but interview actually conducted 1985

Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand...

Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand
On Father's Day in Australia - the father of Romanticism in French literature
Born: September 4th, 1768 - Saint-Malo, France
Died: July 4th, 1848 - Paris, France


non fiction writer
travel writer
autobiographer
politician



You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light. One only hates mankind and life itself through failing to look deeply enough.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
- The Genius of Christianity or The Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion

Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life.
- Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe